to a certain Herr Goldstein in St. Petersburg, a jeweler. I said that it came to me by chance, what was it? Herr Goldstein inspected it with ardor, then told me circumspectly that he did not know what it was but could buy it off me. Had I any more of these stones? Maybe, I said. I told him to name the price, and he did. I doubled the number, stooped over him across the table, and watched what he’d do. As soon as he conceded, I leaned further forward and told him to explain himself. “It is not a diamond,” he said with trepidation, “But it could pass as one. If Your Nobleship were interested in considering the possibilities .”
I was interested.
Herr Goldstein’s money bought me Matryona and Savva. I settled them away from myself, in Preobrazhenskaya Sloboda, the main campus of my regiment in St. Petersburg, and set Matryona up as a laundress. Intruth, I did not want to ever see her. It caused me grief. It could be said that I manumitted her and Savva because I did not want to be legally responsible for them. Except that I felt responsible still.
In June Anna gave birth to a healthy boy, Andrei Junior, and insisted that I become his godfather. I returned to Velitzyno for the baptism and beheld the happy family. “You two—make peace,” Anna ordered, a superior authority of motherhood upon her, and we obliged. An eerie feeling it was, when my brother and I stalked toward each other: it was like walking toward one’s own long-lost reflection, now feral and unrecognizable. We embraced—and, remarkably, no annihilation commenced. Then I got to hold the little one, Andrei Junior. It was joy. Thus came about my last, most important, lesson: Joy made me cold too.
I wasn’t alerted to it by the infant’s complaint—I gave him up before the wave of cold crested because I felt it coming, and I swallowed the bitter discovery without so much as a chuckle. I was a student of reserve now. I was training myself to accept that my life would be spent giving up, pulling back, stepping aside—always on the watch for a seizure of cold and ready to withdraw well before anyone complained.
As for the icicles—I found a few more of them by the old barn. Just lying there in the dirt as new grass was pushing out all around them.
The Blind Saint
1770‒74
L et me explain if it isn’t yet clear. If it is winter, go outside and scoop a handful of snow; if summer, find a mountain stream, find a cold ocean, take your shoes off, and walk in. If it’s a dewy late-October morning, stand barefoot in the grass, pick up the last apple left behind in an orchard or the first pebble you see on a road; find, if you must, a wrought-iron fence and press your forehead into it, squeeze its bars with your bare hands. You’ll feel it. Almost immediately, your feet, your hands, your forehead—I’m told—will start to ache. That is how it feels to touch me when I’m cold.
• • •
Two years after we’d made our truce, Andrei moved his family to Orenburg, almost tripling the distance between us.
Anna and I kept exchanging letters, but that was not the cause—those were perfectly innocuous reports of family life and St. Petersburg’s scene. Was it because whenever I visited Moscow, I brought toys to little Andrei? A miniature landaulet just big enough to sit him, should he wish to be propelled around the house; a wooden grenadier, finely carved and painted in Preobrazhensky colors, with a free-rotating grenade-throwing arm . . . I was just trying to be a good godfather! No, it had nothing to do with me. In 1771, Moscow saw a breakout of plague and rioting. My brother was fleeing these calamities, that’s all. Only . . . he could have fled toward, not away from me. Besides,Velitzyno remained a safe place, the plague did not strike the privileged class.
Enough, I said, stop second guessing.
Orenburg was a walled city in the foothills of the Urals at the empire’s southeastern border, in the land of nomad hordes, Cossack
I was interested.
Herr Goldstein’s money bought me Matryona and Savva. I settled them away from myself, in Preobrazhenskaya Sloboda, the main campus of my regiment in St. Petersburg, and set Matryona up as a laundress. Intruth, I did not want to ever see her. It caused me grief. It could be said that I manumitted her and Savva because I did not want to be legally responsible for them. Except that I felt responsible still.
In June Anna gave birth to a healthy boy, Andrei Junior, and insisted that I become his godfather. I returned to Velitzyno for the baptism and beheld the happy family. “You two—make peace,” Anna ordered, a superior authority of motherhood upon her, and we obliged. An eerie feeling it was, when my brother and I stalked toward each other: it was like walking toward one’s own long-lost reflection, now feral and unrecognizable. We embraced—and, remarkably, no annihilation commenced. Then I got to hold the little one, Andrei Junior. It was joy. Thus came about my last, most important, lesson: Joy made me cold too.
I wasn’t alerted to it by the infant’s complaint—I gave him up before the wave of cold crested because I felt it coming, and I swallowed the bitter discovery without so much as a chuckle. I was a student of reserve now. I was training myself to accept that my life would be spent giving up, pulling back, stepping aside—always on the watch for a seizure of cold and ready to withdraw well before anyone complained.
As for the icicles—I found a few more of them by the old barn. Just lying there in the dirt as new grass was pushing out all around them.
The Blind Saint
1770‒74
L et me explain if it isn’t yet clear. If it is winter, go outside and scoop a handful of snow; if summer, find a mountain stream, find a cold ocean, take your shoes off, and walk in. If it’s a dewy late-October morning, stand barefoot in the grass, pick up the last apple left behind in an orchard or the first pebble you see on a road; find, if you must, a wrought-iron fence and press your forehead into it, squeeze its bars with your bare hands. You’ll feel it. Almost immediately, your feet, your hands, your forehead—I’m told—will start to ache. That is how it feels to touch me when I’m cold.
• • •
Two years after we’d made our truce, Andrei moved his family to Orenburg, almost tripling the distance between us.
Anna and I kept exchanging letters, but that was not the cause—those were perfectly innocuous reports of family life and St. Petersburg’s scene. Was it because whenever I visited Moscow, I brought toys to little Andrei? A miniature landaulet just big enough to sit him, should he wish to be propelled around the house; a wooden grenadier, finely carved and painted in Preobrazhensky colors, with a free-rotating grenade-throwing arm . . . I was just trying to be a good godfather! No, it had nothing to do with me. In 1771, Moscow saw a breakout of plague and rioting. My brother was fleeing these calamities, that’s all. Only . . . he could have fled toward, not away from me. Besides,Velitzyno remained a safe place, the plague did not strike the privileged class.
Enough, I said, stop second guessing.
Orenburg was a walled city in the foothills of the Urals at the empire’s southeastern border, in the land of nomad hordes, Cossack
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